EPoX EP-AT690G Pro Motherboard Review - Benchmarking

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Once the machine was running, with an install of Windows XP, I figured it was time for some benchmarking.  Here's what I was using as a test machine.

• EPoX EP-AT690G Pro Motherboard
• AMD 64 X2 3800+ CPU
• 1GB Patriot DDR2 Memory
• On-board X700 Radeon Video

Overclocking

Before running through all of the benchmarks, I decided to see what I could squeeze out of the machine in overclocking.  My AMD 64 X2 3800+ by default runs at 2.0 GHz.  By massaging the CPU and DRAM voltage, I was able to get the core up to 2.6 GHz, running steadily.  This is a decent overclock (especially since I was working with stock cooling).  I once again take my hat off to EPoX, who make their boards with the hardware enthusiast in mind.  After successfully speeding up the machine, I was going to attempt to overclock the onboard video, but the ATItool utility wouldn't recognize it.

For my testing, I used the following benchmarks:

• PCmark2005
• 3dmark05
• Doom 3
• FEAR

Since I have no other AM2 boards for comparison currently, there will be no other boards listed to compare it to.  I did all of the tests against the board and CPU at stock settings, and then again overclocked at 2.6GHz.  Here are my results:

First I ran a PC Mark test.  This test covers a number of different items, and shows overall system performance.

PCMark 2005
Stock	3250
Overclocked	3479

3DMark 2005
Stock	991
Overclocked	1018

Please keep in mind that the above scores are based on the system using the onboard graphics.  I could have stuck in a nice 16x PCIE graphics card and scored higher on all of these tests, but I thought it only fair to review what I had in front of me.

That being the case, I am almost embarrassed to report the performance of my tests in both FEAR and Doom 3.  While the integrated video ran great for the OS and simple benchmarks, once we got into actual 3D processing, the thing just kind of bogged down and died.  I was honestly getting between 4 and 10 fps in Doom 3, and it was even worse in FEAR.  If you are looking for a board with on-board video with good 3D performance, this is not your puppy.  The scores were so bad, overclocked or not, I didn't even bother making grids for them.

Next: Wrapping it Up >>
 

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Comments On: EPoX EP-AT690G Pro Motherboard Review

· Great motherboard. Not fair of me to expect too much from the onboard graphics, but...    · Just one question, why were you not running it in dual channel mode? Unless you...    · I'll be interesting to see more details on the chipset when they are released - it...    · The pictures you see are in dual channel mode. EPoX seems to make it a habit to put...    · Ya I apologize, I'm so used to dual channel being slots 1 and 3. Never really makes...   >>> Post your comment now!

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